A Deep Forest Creek

The sound environment of the tropical forest is incredibly dynamic. The actuation of millions of living things interact in specific spaces and times to produce collective sound structures at many different time scales, frequencies, and intensities. Some of the temporal structures, like the chorusing of frogs, are relatively easy to hear. But the structures at much longer durations, like the sound of day, are somewhat outside our conscious perception. We can describe in words how the sound environment of the forest evolves over the course of the day, but it is incredibly challenging to be engaged in the act of listening for this period of time.

At long timescales, our experience is perceived through memory. The “thickness” of the present moment is actually quite minimal, and is intimately tied to our physiology. The pressures of metabolism, the environment, and the temporal range of our own neural oscillations limit our ability to experience a day as a complete structural unit. We attend to shorter, more local events one at a time and then reflect on the entirety of what has happened.